New Steps
by broadhands
Summary: One shot - A young woman with a painful history enters the Avatar program - parallels with the movie, in more ways than one. If you liked this, there is a longer sequel - 'En Pointe' - that picks up where this leaves off.


**Overture**

Nadia was slow to recover from cryo. That was why she didn't make the first shuttle down to Pandora from the _ISV Venture Star_. It didn't really matter. She could wait for a few more hours. After all, she had been fighting for this opportunity for the last twelve years of her life – eighteen if you counted the time in cryo.

She was sitting in the starship mess eating some tasteless gloop from a plastic pouch when someone tapped her on her shoulder. She dropped her spoon and turned to face the person.

"Are you fucking deaf?" shouted the crewman angrily. "Didn't you hear the announcement? You should have assembled in the launch bay five minutes ago."

"Actually," she said, signing at the same time as she spoke, "I am fucking deaf."

A hot flush of embarrassment and confusion appeared on the crewman's face. "I'm sorry," he started to say. The small woman was attractive if you ignored the faint scarring on the left side of her face. Actually, she was more than that. She was a knockout.

"Don't be," Nadia said in her flat voice. "I don't want your fucking pity." She rose from the bench, grabbed her kitbag and headed for the launch bay.

The transfer down to the station was smooth, as though the crew had done it hundreds of times before, although that was impossible. There were only a dozen or so people in the hold of the shuttle - the rest of the space was occupied by pallets of stores. Mostly food she expected, if you could call the gloop that came in the pouches food. At least she wasn't going to have trouble with weight gain, not on Pandora.

Some gung-ho military type was yelling something about exo-packs. She had closely studied all the briefing materials, so whatever he was saying might as well been 'Baa-baa Black Sheep', for all the extra knowledge content he was trying to convey – at least to her. Nadia picked up her exo-pack, checked the status of the filters and slipped it over her head, feeling the pressure differential against her face when she activated the seal. Unlike everyone else, she had a final step to her procedure – inserting her earplugs. The absence of her eardrums would otherwise allow Pandoran atmosphere to seep slowly and poisonously into her lungs.

Nadia felt a little frisson of excitement as she felt the shuttle slow and drop gently to the ground. The ramp almost immediately started to drop, and she saw the alien atmosphere swirl into the cargo bay of the shuttle.

The grunt yelled at them to move, so she ran after the leaders towards a group of buildings into an airlock. The late arrivals were hustled to what looked like the mess hall, where some tin-pot king of briefing had started droning on. Much to her surprise there was some guy on a wheelchair at the back of the space. So she wasn't the only 'special needs' person here.

She whipped out her PDA and tapped on the speech transliteration function. The military type was crapping on about how dangerous Pandora was – natives and wildlife, and how many of them would die if they didn't follow the rules.

Nadia sighed. The sooner this was done, the sooner she could check out her Avatar.

**First Act**

"Is this turning into some employment opportunity scheme for the handicapped?" snarled Doctor Augustine. "First the crippled jarhead, and now you!"

Nadia snarled back, "Under the Anti-discrimination Act of 2129, RDA is obliged to give employment preference to citizens with 'special needs', as long as they meet all other requirements of a position, Dr Augustine. I have a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology, and have passed every requirement of the Avatar program to get here. So unless you want the RDA to be hit with the maximum fine and the resultant bad publicity back on Earth, I suggest you shut the fuck up and let me clock up some time in my Avatar."

The tall scientist towered over her by almost twelve inches. She reddened and clenched her fists, her eyes gleaming with anger. To Nadia's amusement, Dr Augustine's lips moved – she was counting to ten.

"Would you like to use your fingers as well?" asked Nadia flatly. "It might make it easier for you."

"Jesus fuck!" swore the head of the Avatar program. "You're an arrogant little bitch, aren't you?"

"I just expect to be treated with respect, Dr Augustine," said Nadia in her expressionless voice. "I've spent twelve years training for this."

"Well," said the head of the Avatar program. "You've wasted your time. The Na'vi would rather kill us than talk to us, so any chance of you conducting field trips with your hundred-million dollar Avatar is out of the question."

"What?" exclaimed Nadia.

Her nominal boss lit a cigarette and took a drag. At least she had the courtesy not to blow it in Nadia's face. "Three years ago while you were in cryo, there was an incident at the Omaticaya school. Half the children there were killed by RDA troops, including the oldest daughter of their chieftain. The Na'vi have refused to talk to us ever since."

Nadia sagged at her knees. Pandora was supposed to be her big opportunity, how she would redeem the wreck of her life, and it was gone like smoke in the wind.

"Seeing you're here, I'm not going to waste you," said Dr Augustine. "I'll assign you to one of the outstations to fetch and carry for one of the bio-teams. You might as well do something useful for the next six years. Max Patel will tell you about it." She pointed to a swarthy bearded man wearing glasses, spun on her heel and walked away.

"Hi, I'm Max," signed the swarthy man to her surprise. "You must be Dr Nadia Khudoshin."

She signed back, "I didn't expect anyone to sign here."

"Just me, as far as I know," signed Max. "My little sister is deaf."

"Thanks," she said aloud. Nadia had a feeling that Max was a nice person.

"She likes you," said Max.

"Who?"

"Grace. Dr Augustine," he replied. "She likes people who push back, and don't give a damn about what others think. That's why she's putting you on an outstation. There are drivers here that have hardly been out of Hell's Gate for the last three years, and you're going straight out there. Just don't screw up."

"I won't," she assured him.

"We better run you through your medical," he said kindly. "Just step into the consulting room and I'll be with you in a moment."

Here it came, she thought, as she removed her clothes. Pity. This was the part she hated. Max entered as Nadia removed the wig from her bald head and he stopped dead.

"My God," he said softly. The entire rear of Nadia's body was a mass of scar tissue, with long keloid ridges and the unmistakeable signs of hundreds of skin grafts. He had never seen anything like it, not outside textbooks. "What happened?" he asked. He sounded more curious than anything else.

"I was three kilometres from ground zero when some psychos from the Trans-Caucasus exploded a suitcase nuke in Kiev," said Nadia, turning around to face him. She had lost all modesty in her years in hospitals – what she couldn't stand was pity. "Most of the damage is from flash burns – I was lucky enough to be facing away from the explosion, so I still have most of my sight. The blast wave destroyed my ear drums. They should have been repairable, but I caught meningitis while in hospital. The radiation sickness depressed my immune system so I couldn't fight it off. That permanently damaged my inner ear and auditory nerves, so I have some problems with my balance as well as the deafness. It's all in my medical records."

"But there are so many treatments that could have prevented the scarring," he protested. "It shouldn't be like this." He was shocked by her matter-of-fact attitude. In her place he would have been shattered.

Nadia replied calmly, "There were over five hundred thousand casualties – the emergency services could not cope with that many burns cases, but I was one of the lucky ones. I survived."

Max buried himself in her medical records while she stood and waited patiently. He then subjected her to a very thorough examination, repeating all the tests that so many doctors had subjected to her through the years.

Eventually he said, "Despite your history everything seems to be in reasonable working order. Are you finding your pain relief adequate?"

"I don't take anything," she said. "I can manage the pain. It was part of my training, even before the nuke."

Now he really was curious about the petite woman. "What kind of training?" he asked. "Military?" He couldn't see how such a slight petite woman could be in the armed forces.

"No," she replied. "I was a classical dancer."

**First Interlude**

News spread quickly. Everyone, even the grunts, avoided her, as though her condition was infectious. The few that spoke to her were studiously polite and careful not to give offense, but they all spoke so damn slowly, as though she was an idiot.

Somehow she ended up with sleeping quarters by herself.

She hated it.

**Second Act**

The first time she linked to her Avatar was unsettling. She felt no pain, and she could move. Still, she did everything that she was told to, obeying the medical staff like she always had – at least while they were watching.

She had heard about wheelchair guy – Sully – how he had smashed up the decanting room in his euphoria at being able to walk again. Nadia was not going to be like that – the damage he caused took two days to fix. Two days that she had to wait. She could have screamed at his selfishness.

Nadia was too disciplined to let others see what she was feeling. She just went through the training that she was required to do, and made sure she did it better than anyone else. Still, it was strange being able to hear everything again. Her voice sounded different to what she remembered.

When she unlinked, Nadia felt the scars on her back pulling tight, restricting her movement like always, and the curtain of endless agony descended. But she didn't let that stop her. It was only pain. As long as she didn't let herself feel anything, she would be fine.

A couple of weeks later she was flown out with her Avatar to site thirty-one, to work as an assistant to a bio-team. Site thirty-one was in the Hallelujah Mountains – no, it was on one of them – one of the largest of the floating mountains, but it was not connected to any of the others by aerial root systems. So there were no predators – at least land predators. There was always the chance of attack by banshees, and there was danger from both plants and insects.

The two researchers on the bio-team – Chandrasekhar and Martinez – were xeno-entomologists, studying Pandoran insect analogues and how they interacted with plants. They were quite pleasant, and the work wasn't too bad, but she had no real connection with them. In any case, most of the time they used the link units back at Hell's Gate to hook up to their Avatars, which meant at night she was the only person at site thirty-one. Someone had to make sure the Avatars were ok, after all, and the two researchers were only too happy to work out of Hell's Gate rather than the outstation.

Over a period of two weeks she had been taken over virtually all of the floating mountain and memorised all of the landmarks. In the centre of the mountain there was a depression filled with what everyone called willow trees. They weren't really willows, though. She had marked this place as special as there was an area of hard packed flat earth.

That evening, after the Chandrasekhar and Martinez had secured their Avatars and unlinked, she hooked back into her Avatar. This was what she had been waiting for.

Nadia had hacked the system so that she could hide her use of the link unit from central control. She linked up, and felt the rush through the tunnel of light. She shivered with delight at feeling the absence of pain, and quickly slipped out of the Avatar enclosure, making sure she shut the door firmly. She was carrying her weapons – two short-swords. The researchers had laughed at her for carrying the blades, until Nadia showed them what she could do with them. It seemed that sword dancing was an under-rated skill on Pandora.

When she reached the place of the willow trees, she carefully removed her weapons, and then shucked off her clothes. There was no-one to watch, so why should she be concerned for her modesty?

The Avatar body was as flexible as her own had been, when she was nineteen and whole, and it was much stronger. But there was no point in taking chances, so she carefully ran through all her stretches and warming up exercises. And then she began to dance.

She had not forgotten anything, although it all felt strange. Her queue and tail changed her balance, and made her a little awkward at first, until she adapted to their presence.

After an hour of dancing in the light of the trees, she decided it was time to do what she wanted. Her feet should be strong enough to do this without ballet shoes – so she carefully rose up until she was standing en pointe, on the ends of her toes, an impossible move for a human – but not for a Na'vi. It hurt, but nothing like the pain she lived with every day.

As she danced, one thought was running through her mind. God, she had missed this. Tears were running down her face, as blood ran from her abused toes.

Her ears twitched. There had been a sharp intake of breath, as though someone close was watching, but there was no way it could be a human or an Avatar.

Calmly, she stopped dancing and walked over to her gear. She drew her two short swords and called out in Na'vi, "You can come out."

There was a rustling of undergrowth, as though someone was ashamed for being detected, and an adult male Na'vi stepped out. "You are tawtute, dreamwalker," he said in English.

"Yes, I am," she replied.

"What do you do in sacred place?" he demanded. "You do not belong here."

"I do not belong anywhere," she answered. It was truth – she had no home, no kin and no friends. She did not belong here, or at Hell's Gate, or on Earth. Most of the time, she did not feel she belonged amongst the living.

The Na'vi seemed taken aback at her answer. Nadia doubted that he was going to kill her, so she laid down her weapons, and explained, "I dance to honour Eywa, to tell of the fleeting triumph of life over death."

He nodded slowly, casting his eyes coolly up and down her naked body. She did not flinch away or attempt to cover herself, but merely waited for him to speak. Finally, he said, "You are not unpleasing to the eye. You may continue to dance here."

The warrior, for that was what he was, turned and faded into the undergrowth. A minute or two later she heard the unmistakeable sound of a banshee launching itself into flight.

**Second Interlude**

Every night after the researchers unlinked, Nadia returned to the place of the willows to dance. Sometimes she thought she was being watched, and other times she was sure she was alone. But she didn't care. What she had told the Na'vi was true – she danced to affirm that she was not dead, but alive – despite the cost that living had exacted on her.

**Third Act**

After more than a month of her nocturnal dancing, the Na'vi appeared one night. "Why do you dance until your feet bleed, dreamwalker?" he demanded.

She half-smiled at the man, for that was how she thought of him, although she had only spoken to him once. "One must pay for the beauty of the dance," she said. "The price is blood and pain, but only the dancer can know if the price is fair. Without the sacrifice, the beauty is stolen and worthless. In that, it is like life."

The Na'vi was silent.

She was about to speak again when he said, "It seems that not all the dreamwalkers are blind."

Nadia replied, "It is a hard lesson to learn, warrior."

"My name is Txep'ean, dreamwalker," he said. "What is yours?"

"Nadia," she replied.

"Na'dia," he repeated. "What does it mean, in your tawtute tongue?"

"Hope," she said.

"It is a strong name," he said. "It fits you well."

She felt a flush of embarrassment for this simple statement – she could give no answer.

The Na'vi squatted on his haunches, and asked, "Why are you here?"

"I am not a hunter, or a warrior. Instead it is my skill to be a dancer," she replied. "I would learn of the Na'vi through their dances, and tell the stories of the tawtute to the Na'vi through our dances."

Txep'ean nodded, and started to talk, telling her of the dances that his tribe danced – the Omaticaya. He told her of the stories they told, and the events they celebrated.

She asked about courtship dances, and the role they had in wooing a mate. He looked a little uncomfortable at this discussion, and admitted he had little knowledge of such things, as he had not danced these dances yet.

After he had left and she unlinked, Nadia was recording for hours on her video log. She had finished the last entry when she coughed, splattering the screen with a dark fluid. She wiped it off with her hand, and smiled bitterly. The blood told her that she was running out of time.

When Chandrasekhar and Martinez returned the following morning, she said nothing. They would insist that she be evacuated to Hell's Gate, and the doctors would never let her return – for her own good. So she falsified her weekly medical tests, and continued doing her work in her normal, efficient manner.

**Third Interlude**

Txep'ean returned every night to watch Nadia dance. Afterwards they would talk for hours. Eventually she persuaded him to perform some of the Omaticaya dances for her. Nadia even got him to dance with her. She had wanted to film him, but instead took careful notes, and religiously maintained her video log.

As time passed, her coughing got worse. She found it harder to force food down and give her human body the exercise it needed. Nadia was growing weaker.

One day while she was out collecting samples with the researchers, she heard the rumble of thunder, although there was not a cloud in the sky.

That night, Txep'ean did not come. She danced alone for hours, heart-broken, until she stumbled. The sacred willow place faded before her, as though the link was ending. "No!" she screamed, hanging on to the dance, somehow completing it. She did not know how she returned to the Avatar hut, clinging to her body only by strength of will.

When she awoke in her link unit, she did not get up when it opened, but lay there weeping. She did not want to die yet.

Chandrasekhar and Martinez did not return the following morning, but Nadia did not know of their absence. She slept the sleep of the exhausted, sleeping through the alarms and the strobing lights. She even slept through an overflight by a chopper. It was not the usual pilot that ran supplies to site thirty-one, and he hadn't been briefed as to Nadia's deafness. He merely reported that there was no activity at site thirty-one, and Hell's Gate could not afford any more time. The blue monkeys must have killed her, he said.

**Fourth Act**

Nadia slept through an entire day and night before she woke, rested. She did not check her messages, but struggled through her normal routine of eating gloop, washing, and linking to her Avatar.

As soon as her eyes blinked open, the noise of choppers filled her ears. She rushed outside to see over a hundred choppers thunder overhead, ignoring her. Something was wrong, very wrong. There was even a shuttle in the midst of the formation.

She watched the choppers fly off into the Hallelujah Mountains, until they dwindled into toys – toys that flashed into fireballs, as banshees fell upon them from the heights. All she could hear was the rumble of explosions, like distant thunder.

It seemed that once again she was a witness to violence.

There was nothing she could do but watch the diving and twisting of choppers and banshees, her heart in her mouth, until she saw a banshee approach. She backed away nervously as it flapped in to land, screaming at her. There was a rider on its back, slumped on its neck. As she watched, the rider slipped sideways off the banshee, leaving a long smear of blood on the riding animal. It was Txep'ean.

Before she knew what she was doing, Nadia ran forward, scooping the warrior up in her strong arms and carrying him into the Avatar hut. She swept everything off the table in the middle of the room, dumped Txep'ean on it, grabbed the Na'vi trauma kit, and ran a scan over his body.

Txep'ean had two bullet wounds – through and throughs, both of them, but not too serious. He had lost a lot of blood though. Nadia slapped some dressings on the wounds, and quickly hooked up some synthetic Na'vi blood through an IV. Fortunately, all Na'vi seemed to be the same blood type, so rejection wasn't going to be an issue.

A little while later, Txep'ean came around. "I See you, Na'dia," he said weakly.

"I See you, Txep'ean of the Omaticaya," she responded, smiling at her friend.

"Why do you heal me?" he asked. "I fight your people, the tawtute. We had no choice. They destroyed Hometree."

Nadia's heart chilled. "You are my friend," she said eventually. "I did not wish for war between our peoples. I hate war, for what it did to me and mine."

"Thank you," he said, and slipped into deep sleep.

Nadia worked to keep him alive, and to keep the other Avatars alive, but no-one returned to pick her up, or answered her increasingly desperate calls. The effort of keeping them all alive and fed was killing her, so after two weeks, she took two syringes, and carefully injected both of the empty Avatars with a lethal dose. Their shallow breaths slowed and then stopped. It was with difficulty that she dragged the bodies outside, but she could take them no further. She staggered back to the Avatar hut, and collapsed on the floor.

The dying woman woke in the link unit. She knew she would not have the strength to link again, and there was no-one to help her. She was alone – alone as she had been since the flash of nuclear fire had burnt away her life.

She slowly stood up, donned her exo-pack and walked to the air-lock. Somehow, she managed to cycle the airlock, and stagger down the steps into the Avatar hut. The Na'vi was conscious, and sat up in surprise at her entry.

"Txep'ean," she said. He recognised her voice and relaxed. "You must return to your people. I can no longer care for you."

"Are you sending me away, Na'dia?" he asked sadly. The tawtute leaders must have told her that she could not be friends with the Na'vi any longer.

"Yes," she said, leaning against the door. "My tawtute body is failing, and I will die with it. I'm sorry, Txep'ean, but you must go." With those words, the hut faded to black and she slumped to the floor.

**Fourth Interlude**

Nadia dreamt she was flying, that there were strong arms that were holding her. This dance partner would not let her fall.

She heard voices, arguing in Na'vi, but she couldn't really make out the words, until one voice – a voice she knew well – shouted, "Na'dia Sees more than you all, even the Toruk Makto. Even the Tsahik. She sacrificed her life for another, not her kin, or even her own kind. None here is as worthy."

A kind but strong voice, an older woman's voice said, "Her pain is deep and old – far greater than it is fair to ask a living person to bear. I have never seen a soul so alone. It would be kinder to let her slip away into the arms of Eywa."

The familiar voice said, "No. I will not have it. She must live."

The woman said, "This is your wish? You know what you are asking?"

"Yes," he said. "I have Chosen to pay the price. I wish to heal her."

"So be it," said the woman.

**Finale**

She must be in the link unit, thought Na'dia, as she fell down the tunnel of light. She would like to dance again, just once more.

She landed in a familiar place, a place that no longer existed - the dance studio in Kiev where she first learned to dance. It smelt of the familiar scents, of wax and sweat and perfume, the smooth wooden floor glowing in the sun. Nadia went to the barre, and started on some exercises, carefully watching her line and form in the mirrors.

Something was different, though. She studied her face and body – all the lines seemed right, until she realised that she was gazing at her Avatar body. This must be a dream.

"You're very good at this, Nadia," said Grace Augustine, admiring her grace and style.

"I was going to dance with the Kiev Ballet," she said sadly. "Until the bomb. Am I dead?"

"Almost," said Grace. "I am, but you have a choice. You can stay here, or you can go back."

There was no pain here, none of the agony that she had been suffering for the last twelve years. It would be the easy road, to stay here. It would be safe, the easy road, but...when had she ever taken the easy road? Even so, it was tempting, the surcease of pain and anguish.

"I believe there is someone waiting, back there," said Grace wistfully. "I think he wants to dance with you."

"Txep'ean!" she cried out.

It seemed with voicing that single name she had chosen. Her soul plunged down the tunnel of light, away from Grace. But this time there was no pain.

Nadia's eyes fluttered open to see the face of a friend hovering above her. "I See you, Txep'ean," she whispered.

"You were wrong, Na'dia," he said. "You do belong somewhere. You belong here, with me."

She lay beneath a willow tree, surrounded by the Omaticaya. Slowly, she sat up, to see a tiny pale body lying empty beside her, no larger than a young child's. It was horribly scarred and twisted with pain and anguish and agony, every moment of which she could recall with perfect clarity. She reached down to pick up her body, cradling it in her arms, weeping for the sorrow that she had felt in it.

"Can you place her somewhere peaceful," asked Nadia. "She suffered greatly."

"Come," said Txep'ean. "There is a place." He led her through the silent Omaticaya around the Tree of Souls, to a grave beneath a pamtseowll plant, the ears hooting quietly but musically in the gentle breeze. "I thought a dancer should rest to gentle music," he said.

Nadia lay the small body in the grave. "Thank you," she said quietly.

Much to her surprise, he took something from a pouch and laid it in the grave alongside her body – a pair of ballet shoes, the only ones that she had brought to Pandora. He must have taken them from the shack at site thirty-one.

She held him close, kissed him on the lips, and whispered, "I would dance with you, Txep'ean, always."


End file.
